


Hurled Into Another World

by OhZee



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Based on a Tumblr Post, M/M, honestly it makes so much sense, jaskier is from our world, sort of au except absolutely not, this is kind of crack except also not?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhZee/pseuds/OhZee
Summary: Jaskier falls through a portal while working at the Ren Faire and finds himself in a world of magic and monsters. Naturally, this is the most exciting thing to ever happen to him and he proceeds to live it up like he's just gone to Narnia.Or; the story you already know, except Jaskier is from our world, which is... basically canon, when you think about it. It explains so much.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 20
Kudos: 209





	Hurled Into Another World

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr strikes again. Inspired by this post: https://bygodstillam.tumblr.com/post/643028599694376960
> 
> I have WIPs I should be working on and this just falls right out of my head in a handful of hours. Whatever, I give up.

It was shocking at first, but possibly less shocking than it should have been. For one thing, Jaskier had been appropriately dressed for the occasion of falling through a portal into a medieval world, having come directly from working a booth at the local Ren Faire. For another, being raised on fiction like _Narnia_ and _Harry Potter_ does a surprising amount to prepare one for being unexpectedly tossed into another universe.

All in all, it took less than a day for the confusion and mild alarm to give way to _utter glee_.

He charmed his way into a lady’s bed so he could have a place to spend the night, then proceeded to charm information out of the locals, collecting bits of trivia as if he was in a video game, absorbing knowledge he would need to succeed on his quest. What his quest would _be_ , exactly, he hadn’t decided yet, but the world was his oyster and all that rot.

It came to him as he bluffed his way into a few drinks at a tavern by striking up a conversation with some tipsy troubadours. They asked if he could sing. He didn’t join the choir as a kid and form a nerdy _Lord of the Rings_ themed garage band in high school for nothing. He didn’t learn how to play the lute for his gig at the Ren Faire just so he could play instrumentals. But that’s not what he told them. What he told them was this:

That he himself was a bard somewhat down on his luck. He’d had his lute stolen by bandits — a sob story that had them eating out of his hand — but he can indeed sing. And would do so with relish. If they were willing to indulge him, he would like to sing some of his own compositions so that he might earn some coin with which to buy a new lute.

They indulged him, and improvised marvelously on their instruments while Jaskier sang such hits as _Scarborough Fair_ and hoped Simon and Garfunkel would forgive him.

Their audience was suitably impressed and Jaskier scooped up his earnings while imagining he’d just levelled up in the game he was playing.

And so it went that Jaskier did ultimately buy a new lute of decent quality and tried his hand at actually composing his own songs. It was rough at first, and his plagiarism of popular Earth songs continued for a time, but eventually he started to get the hang of it. He tested out his original works on the more out-of-the-way towns with mixed success before playing the well-received ones in larger cities.

He made up a backstory. Noticing that people aged less gracefully than in modern times, he pretended to be eighteen instead of twenty-five, freshly graduated from Oxenfurt. He didn’t figure anyone would check up on his claims. (The only one who did was Valdo Marx, who earned himself an enemy for life for the attempt. As it turned out, many of Oxenfurt’s records had been fortuitously destroyed in a fire, and in due time there were plenty of people willing to claim they’d been his classmate even though they had not.)

He figured at some point someone would call him out on his lie that he was a viscount, though it hadn’t happened just yet. In all fairness, he’d been _very_ drunk when he’d made the claim, and trying to impress a pretty barmaid. By some miracle he’d gotten away with it, but he tried not to bring it up often. He avoided Lettenhove, just in case. If anyone asked, he’d had a falling out with his father.

(His real father was a moderately successful tax accountant with a toy train hobby. Their relationship was fine, and Jaskier worried a little that his parents were missing him.)

Things were getting a little stale by the time he landed in Posada. Being a bard was fun and traveling had been exciting, but renown was slow in coming and it was all beginning to feel a little bit like a _job_ , which was just not on.

Then, during a truly awful rendition of the uninspired crap he’d been working on during his little depression, he spotted a witcher in the corner of the room.

A “New Quest” sign could have popped up superimposed over the white-haired witcher and Jaskier wouldn’t have blinked. The man was like an active animation cell draped over the painted background in a Scooby Doo cartoon. He might as well have had _interact with me_ written on his forehead.

So Jaskier interacted. Awkwardly, eagerly, and with no small amount of trying to keep a boner from forming. There wasn’t an action star on Earth who could hold a candle to the way the witcher was built, or his handsome face, and those _eyes_?! Whew! Jaskier had begun to become disillusioned with his lack of exposure to magic and monsters and sexy non-humans in this magical fantasy land and now he had a sexy non-human made from magic who hunted monsters _right here_ and there was no way he leaving Posada without him.

Figuring out the witcher was none other than the _Butcher of Blaviken_ made it feel even more like fate. He’d heard of this infamous, dangerous witcher. It was just one of the many interesting nuggets of information he’d hoarded in his travels, and now it was paying off. This was absolutely the sort of person a protagonist was supposed to team up with.

His impression was only reinforced when Geralt took exception to the title, brought him directly into a conflict with elves that revealed the lie behind their disappearance (and here Jaskier was disappointed in himself for the first time since he’d arrived, having fallen for such obvious propaganda when he should have known better), then saved them both by showing _compassion_. And Jaskier was rewarded with a new lute, though he’d done little enough to earn it.

His path could not have been clearer. He was going to follow Geralt. He was going to use his power as a bard, and his new elven lute, to change Geralt’s reputation. They’d both become well-respected and famous, and maybe at some point they’d do something crazy like save the world.

So despite Geralt’s protests, Jaskier wrote a song for him that was better than any of the others he’d written before. Then he proceeded to follow him, even when Geralt attempted to lose him, and wrote more. Slowly, he felt Geralt was warming up to him. Big grumpy witchers could pretend to be taciturn all they liked, but Jaskier knew better.

Many adventures, side quests, and one very notable royal banquet later, Jaskier tripped through another portal and found himself back on Earth. At the Ren Faire. Right where and when he’d first left, having gone to take a piss in the woods.

He took a long few moments to be very disappointed that his adventure was over. It didn’t feel like he’d finished his journey. He hadn’t accomplished everything he’d set out to do. He’d still been having fun. And he— He was going to miss Geralt. Quite a lot.

Trying not to be too obvious about his mourning, Jaskier went back to his booth and did his job a little too well. After, when his shift was over, his boss complimented him on his exceptional performance. Jaskier tried to be happy about it.

He was much happier in the next few days, after having lunch with his father, chatting with his mother about nothing in particular, showing off his new lute to friends, eating his fill of much-missed takeout and watching an appalling amount of Netflix.

Still, he was absolutely thrilled when he fell through a portal for the third time. He’d been holding his lute, thankfully, and had dressed in a very nice blue barding outfit for a Halloween party when he missed a step and found himself on a road that could only be from the world he’d left behind.

Not an hour later his suspicions were confirmed when he came across a very familiar figure fishing in a river.

He was possibly a little too glad to see Geralt. He tried very casually to ask how long it had been, but received no reply. He made up a story about shacking up with a Countess he was acquainted with, hoping his tale of woe would at least amuse the witcher if not garner some sympathy. Eventually his grumpy witcher admitted he was fishing for a djinn, and Jaskier got tetchy because he was hungry and annoyed at the less than enthusiastic greeting, and it all went very downhill from there.

One magical throat wound and a crazy (gorgeous) sorceress later, and Jaskier felt more than a little frazzled. Was Yennefer supposed to be Geralt’s… love interest? The idea left him feeling strangely hollow. To Jaskier, it felt more like she was a secret enemy whose treachery would be later discovered, and he’d be there to comfort Geralt through the betrayal. But that didn’t exactly leave him feeling any sense of satisfaction. The idea of Geralt being genuinely hurt for a plot point wasn’t something he liked at all.

The next few years were odd. From time to time, Jaskier would find himself whisked home, reset from the time he’d left. After doing some mental math, Jaskier figured he’d lived more than twenty years going to and from worlds and technically had only aged during the time he’d spent on Earth, which only amounted to a handful of months. He was approaching forty-plus years alive while remaining physically in his mid twenties. And due to fortune — or _destiny_ , as Jaskier now believed in with much more personal evidence than Geralt — Jaskier was always appropriately dressed and had his lute on him when he was whisked back to Geralt’s world.

Almost inevitably, they’d run into Yennefer. Inevitably, Geralt would end up in her bed and practically forget Jaskier was there.

For Jaskier, that part felt less and less like a game.

He, an absolute fool, had fallen in love with Geralt. It wasn’t hard. Geralt was easy to love and somehow more _real_ to Jaskier than the dalliances he’d indulged in on their adventures. Geralt wasn’t someone he could wax poetic about and then leave. Geralt… Geralt _was_ his quest. Somehow, he had become the one thing truly worth coming back here for.

But Geralt only had eyes for Yennefer.

Still, Jaskier kept up hope until the day it all came to a head on a mountain, during a quest for a dragon that Jaskier should have found much more exciting than he did. He all but confessed his willingness to abandon the narrative entirely and run away to the coast with Geralt. He would have thought that Geralt would be interested in showing destiny the middle finger and walking right out of his own story. Instead, Geralt went to Yennefer. Yennefer, who had accused Jaskier of having crows feet that he did _not_ , which left him wrong-footed and wondering what she suspected.

And then everything went to shit. Yennefer turned on Geralt and Geralt turned on _him_.

The worst part was that it was sort of true, the things Geralt accused him of. Jaskier could see the thread of destiny so much more clearly than Geralt could, precisely because he’d been brought in as an outsider. He could see the story unfolding and had gone along with it. Though Geralt had made his own decisions, Jaskier had played his part in the setup.

He regretted every moment of it now.

It was a relief when he stumbled on the path down the mountain and fell back to Earth.

When his friends asked what was wrong, he told them he’d been rejected, which was true enough. They didn’t understand why he was taking it so hard since surely it hadn’t been anyone he’d known long enough to care about so much, but they were sympathetic. They were there for him.

Jaskier put his doublets and breeches and lute in the back of his closet and tried to forget. He tried not to think too much about Geralt, and was only marginally successful. 

For two years, Jaskier lived a normal life. He continued to work odd jobs and do solo gigs singing cover songs at local bars. It wasn’t particularly fulfilling, but it paid the bills. His inspiration had left him, and even if he could manage to write his own songs again, ones appropriate for a 21st-century audience, the idea of tying himself to a record contract and touring on a schedule left him feeling dissatisfied. He’d spent too long being _free_.

Still, he made something of a reputation for himself, and he was, all in all, reasonably happy. His adventure was over and he was coming to terms with that. If he never put on one of his Ren Faire outfits again, never again touched his lute, then he’d never again be pulled back into the world he’d made such a mess of. Maybe Geralt could find happiness without his interference.

He should really have known it wasn’t that easy to thwart destiny, and perhaps she was a bit pissed at him for even trying.

Perhaps that was why, despite having not touched his lute or his old clothes since the day he’d returned, he found himself stumbling blearily out of bed in nothing but his boxers and falling directly through a portal into a pile of snow.

“Fuck!” he exclaimed, trying to right himself and only partially succeeding. He was abruptly freezing, all the heat fleeing his extremities as he folded in on himself in a frantic attempt to conserve some modicum of warmth.

“Jaskier?”

That familiar voice lanced through him, though the stunned disbelief in it was new. Jaskier jerked his head up and met familiar golden eyes.

Geralt looked like he was seeing a ghost. He had his sword drawn and Jaskier realized the witcher must have seen the portal this time, seen him fall through practically at his feet. Whatever he must have been expecting, it clearly hadn’t been Jaskier.

“G-Geralt…” He tried to speak, to say who knows what, but he only stuttered Geralt’s name as he began shivering violently.

Geralt blinked himself out of whatever daze he’d fallen into and rushed to Jaskier so abruptly it startled him.

In a split second, Geralt’s cloak was wrapped around him and he was bundled up in the witcher’s arms, his legs lifted clear off the ground and into Geralt’s lap, away from the snow. Geralt’s sword lay discarded, left where he’d dropped it in his haste. He kept saying Jaskier’s name, trying alternately to cover every inch of him with the cloak and cupping his face as if he were precious, staring at him with an expression so like grief that it made Jaskier alarmed.

Jaskier cuddled close, Geralt’s heat so welcome that he couldn’t think about how painful it was to be held like this when this wasn’t really his to have.

“Geralt? Where are we?” He managed to ask once his shivering had subsided a little. “What happened?”

Why was Geralt looking at him like that?

“We’re in the Blue Mountains, near Kaer Morhen,” Geralt responded haltingly, oddly choked. “Jaskier… we couldn’t find you. Yen couldn’t trace you. We thought you were _dead_. _I_ thought you were dead.”

Jaskier’s breath froze in his lungs as he realized that if Geralt could cry, he’d be crying right now. His face was a rictus of pain as squeezed Jaskier closer, and all Jaskier could do was try to hug him back as best he could while wrapped tightly in the cloak.

“What happened?” Geralt asked without accusation, breath hot against Jaskier’s ear. “Where were you?”

Jaskier had become very accustomed to lying in this world, to making up stories. But as tears welled in his eyes, he found he didn’t want to lie. Not to this man. Not ever again.

“Another world,” he whispered, knowing Geralt could hear him just fine. “I fell through a portal. How long has it been?” Geralt tensed, squeezing a little tighter. 

“Six years,” he said roughly, as if the words didn’t want to pass his lips. Jaskier’s breath caught. _Six years_. 

Geralt pulled back to look at him again, intently, eyes roaming what little he could see of him without moving away entirely.

“Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?” He wasn’t just concerned, Jaskier realized. He was half-frantic, for a witcher. Jaskier was quick to reassure him.

“No, no. I’m alright. Just cold.” He smiled, trying to lighten the mood a little, but Geralt’s attention only seemed to sharpen at that. He whistled for Roach and swept Jaskier up in a bridal carry.

Jaskier, not expecting it, gasped and clung to Geralt, but didn’t protest. He already felt a little warmer, even _flushed_ he dare say, as Geralt lifted him onto Roach. The witcher absent-mindedly fetched his sword, climbed on behind him, and set off at a quick pace.

“We’ll get you inside soon. It’s not far.” Familiar with the single-minded focus Geralt was now displaying and looking forward to being out of the winter elements, Jaskier just nodded and held on.

In short order, Jaskier was inside, bundled up in some proper blankets in front of a roaring fire and drinking a cup of hot broth. Geralt had not left his side. It had been other witchers who had fetched the broth and blankets. Other witchers who Jaskier had never met, but who wore the same wolf medallion as Geralt and who looked at him like they knew all about him, and were shocked to see him, when Geralt had tersely told them who he was.

But they left soon enough by some unspoken request, leaving Geralt and Jaskier alone.

True to form, Jaskier couldn’t help but break the silence first.

“Six years. It wasn’t that long for me. I suppose a lot must have happened, huh?”

To Jaskier’s surprise, for the very first time in their acquaintance, Geralt began to tell a story without prompting.

In the time Jaskier had been gone, a war had broken out on the continent, Geralt had found his child surprise, and he’d eventually reconciled with Yen. They were raising Ciri together.

It made something in Jaskier’s twist, and the smile he managed to muster up was bittersweet. But Geralt continued.

“I tried to find you. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was. How wrong I was. I blamed you for everything, Jaskier, but I was wrong.”

Jaskier couldn’t help but interrupt. “You weren’t. You weren’t wrong, Geralt, it was my fault. You don’t know—”

Geralt cut him off with a terse shake of his head, grabbing him firmly by the arms. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, Jaskier, because it turned out all for the good. I can’t imagine not knowing Ciri, now. Can’t imagine her not being my daughter. And she wouldn’t have a mother, a teacher in Yen if it hadn’t been for the djinn wish. I don’t regret any of it. I railed against destiny when it was leading me to things I treasure. I railed against _you_ for being the one to lead a stupid horse to water and acting like you made me drink when every decision was my own. And then I _lost_ you for it, and that— Jaskier, that was my only regret. My _greatest_ regret.”

Then Geralt was hugging him again, fiercely, as if he’d never let him go, and Jaskier broke down.

“I’m sorry,” he cried against Geralt’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for. For leaving, even though he hadn’t really meant to. For not trying to come back, maybe. For treating Geralt’s life like his own personal storybook when for Geralt, it was very real. But to know that his actions hadn’t ultimately been cruel, that he’d done well, that he’d led Geralt to a better life… It was more than he’d ever dared hope. He’d been so sure he’d fucked everything up. To know that he hadn’t was such an incredible relief that he’d burst with it. He hadn’t even known how much he’d been holding in.

Geralt held him, let him cry. “I missed you,” he said quietly as Jaskier let it all out. “I kept thinking about what you said, about going to the coast.”

Jaskier’s breath hitched.

“I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts at the time, I didn’t really understand what you were trying to say. But later… I wasn't wrong, was I?”

Jaskier pulled back, sniffing, wondering if he ought to brace himself, but Geralt was looking at him very tenderly. He wiped away his tears.

“When you said we should get away for awhile—”

“Geralt,” Jaskier tried to interrupt—

“—this is what you meant, wasn’t it?”

And softly, Geralt kissed him.

It was everything Jaskier had wanted, and he melted into it. Encouraged, Geralt deepened the kiss, and what had started as something sweet and relatively chaste quickly threatened to become heated.

With great reluctance, and while questioning his own sanity, Jaskier broke away. “But, Yennefer..?”

“We’re not exclusive.”

“Oh,” said Jaskier stupidly.

Geralt looked very much like he wanted to continue, but for the first time in a long time, Jaskier’s conscience wouldn’t leave him alone.

“There are things I need to tell you. About where I’ve been.”

Geralt looked at him seriously, nodding.

“The world I fell into. It’s mine. I’m not originally from here.”

For a moment, Geralt looked completely stunned. Then his brow furrowed. Then, unexpectedly, he began to look exasperated.

“You know, I think that probably explains a lot.”

Jaskier sputtered, tried to be offended, then just dissolved into laughter. Geralt smiled fondly, letting out a huff before allowing himself a chuckle of his own.

“You really are alright, then? You just went home?”

Jaskier sobered some. “I didn’t mean to. The portals just open and—”

As if summoned, a portal opened in the room. Geralt tensed. Jaskier held his breath. For a long moment, they waited. Nothing came through.

“Huh,” Jaskier said with a sudden understanding of just what it was he was looking at, “Usually I just fall through.”

Jaskier knew exactly where the portal would lead. And somehow, he knew he could get back just as easily, now. A little gift from destiny.

“I do need to go fetch my lute,” he mused with a smile. The tension left Geralt’s shoulders as he looked at Jaskier and saw his ease. “I’m pretty confident we can be back in a few minutes, even if we choose to stay a while. And it’s probably easier to just show you, if you’re game?”

He held out his hand and held his breath. Geralt gazed at it for a few heartbeats, then took it with confidence, squeezing gently.

“Lead the way.”


End file.
